NEWSLETTER 02/24
Dear friends of the HfMT,
We're still buzzing from January...
So much WOW! Three really big projects involving many students from all departments took place here:
Monteverdi's interdisciplinary L'Orfeo under the leadership of the Early Music department. A Bachelor's degree in music theater directing by Matthias Piro. His interpretation of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin was praised by world author Stefan Grund as "sensational" and "worthy of any state opera" and brought us storms of enthusiasm in the Forum. And now two wonderful concert evenings with the university orchestra and the chamber choir at the end of the month.
All this activity brought us packed, sometimes sold-out halls.
Thank you very much for coming. It's so much fun to share our work with you!
February is also very promising.
NEW COMPOSITIONS IN THE WORKSHOP CONCERTS
Great orchestral sounds welcome us right at the beginning of the month. This time with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra, who are a valuable partner for our conducting training, our concert exam graduations and also for new works by our composition students. On February 1 and 22, we will hear world premieres by two successful young composers who are just starting out in the professional world with great momentum.
Taiwanese composer Chin-Hsien Chung will present her piece Binding Bonding at the Forum on February 1. "The piece is based on various sources such as emotions, nature and personal experiences and explores in depth the enduring nature of connections (binding) and the intimate process of their formation (bonding)."
Windfuhr's workshop concert on February 1 with Chung, Brahms and Schubert
Iranian-born Sina Fani Sani will present his composition verschmiert, verschleiert, schön, schön!
"The piece is inspired by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and his Diary of the Seducer, in which he writes: "Behind the world in which we live, far in the background, lies another world, which stands in about the same relation to that one as the scene one sometimes sees in the theater behind the real scene. Through a thin pile one sees, as it were, a world of pile, lighter, more aesthetic, better than the real world. Many people who live in this real world do not feel at home in it, but in that other one." The composition is an attempt to make the discrepancy between the two worlds tangible on a performative level."
Windfuhr's workshop concert on February 22 with Sani, Ravel and Mozart
THEATER THROUGH ALL DISCIPLINES
February is turning out to be a month of theater and this wonderful news from Berlin is wonderfully fitting: 4 out of 10 productions invited to this year's Theatertreffen are by graduates of the Hamburg directing program! Congratulations Jette Steckel, Rieke Süßkow, Falk Richter and Nicolas Stemann - we are very proud of you!
Meanwhile, we are working hard in all disciplines:
The students of the Master of Opera have created a scenic evening for opera concisa about the tension between closeness and distance.
In several scenes from opera literature from Monteverdi to the 20th century, the singers play out the numerous possibilities of such contact -- tenderly, sensitively, fiercely and always honestly!
opera concisa from February 2-4
There are two bachelor's degrees in drama directing.
Lucia Wunsch directs Herakles after Euripides: a play about heroes, memories, ageing and breaking - about what remains after accomplished deeds and how one can live on. February 9-11 at Kampnagel
And if you happen to be in Magdeburg at the time, you can see Sophie Glaser's final project there, an adaptation of the novel I'm thinking of ending things by Iain Reid. February 9-11 at Theater Magdeburg
A Lohengrin that is not a Lohengrin awaits you in the final production by Verena Rosna, who, together with her team, refers fiercely to the heroic knight by boldly throwing him and the corresponding Wagner score out of the window and drawing her own conclusions. Please do not expect Lohengrin from 16.2. in the Forum
And finally, the drama students under the direction of Natascha Clasing and Marc Aisenbrey take literary forays from Goethe to Kafka and tell stories about being human and the all-too-human, about searching, finding and failing, about love and laughter. Both venues are located outside the university and are well worth a visit.
MENSCH! - on February 21 at Harburg Town Hall and on February 25 at the Ernst Barlach Haus
Last but not least, we are now in the starting blocks for our new degree program, which we are offering in cooperation with the University of Hamburg. From the winter semester 2024/25, you can also study to become a theater teacher with us and then it's "PLAY, ENCOURAGE, MOVE..." The application period for the first year begins on 15 February.
Further information and an inspiring trailer can be found here on our website:
New degree course in teaching theater
WORLD-CLASS JAZZ FROM DENMARK
We will experience outstanding jazz on February 3 in the JazzHall. Palle Mikkelborg, Jakob Bro and Marilyn Mazur. Three wonderful and legendary protagonists of the Danish jazz scene present their latest ECM album Strands:
The repertoire, mainly penned by Jakob Bro, is treated in a spontaneous and exploratory manner. The material is gently transformed and reinterpreted, while Marilyn Mazur's subtle percussion artistry with flourishing gongs, bowed metals and deep drums merges with Bro's wandering and meandering waves of sound and Mikkelborg's unique trumpet tone. The concert is the first evening of our new JazzHall Betriebs-gGmbH, which will inspire us with top-class concerts in the coming months.
The bad news is that there are currently only 3 tickets available in advance and possibly some remaining tickets at the box office.
Our small consolation: the film Music for black Pigeons, in which Jakob Bro plays a leading role and which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2022, will also be shown at the JazzHall on the evening before the concert. There are still a few tickets left :-)
Music for black Pigeons on February 2
Concert with Palle Mikkelborg, Jakob Bro and Marilyn Mazur on February 3
SYMPOSIUM ON THE WORK
On this "FREE Day", everything at the Theaterakademie revolves around the topic of work, but is also intended for your enjoyment.
As part of the seminar Barbarei der Arbeit (Barbarism of Work), some students of the Master's degree in Dramaturgy and Directing Drama have joined Dr. Benjamin Sprick on an exploratory quest to find out what is difficult to fathom, especially in art, but must be negotiated there in all its dialectics.
"Work is a diffuse category. Where does it begin, what marks its end? And how should work be 'appropriately' remunerated? Which authorities decide on the meaning of work, who denies it any justification?" The group grappled with these questions. They read, learned, discussed and wrestled, contextualized and questioned, in order to finally utilize the results performatively and create a symposium with many levels of approach.
A series of excellent lectures by leading thinkers will be complemented and interrupted by performances and two experiential spaces: one will lead into the contemplative indecision of Hermann Melville's Bartleby ("I would prefer not to"), the other will reflect trade union action and open up opportunities for participation.
DIVERSITY CAN INSPIRE - EQUALITY!
We are embarking on the last of six Diversity Study Weeks this semester.
After the very inspiring weeks on the topics of inclusion, classism, proximity and distance, anti-discrimination and coloniality, we are now taking a look at equality.
The question of equality for women, inter-, trans- and non-binary people is still a central issue of diversity.
We will discuss this in more depth as part of the lecture series on February 6 in the Mendelssohn Hall. An expressive and multimedia concert experience awaits us with Female Rage on February 9.
On Friday, February 2, from 16:30 to 18:30 and on Tuesday, February 6, from 16:00 to 18:30, students will present the results of the course "Diversity 2024 - in the ensemble!" in the foyer (Michel Blümel/Dr. Silke Wenzel): with lectures, poster presentations, music and more. More than 50 students have spent a semester working intensively on the topics of the Study Weeks. We are already very excited!
LIGETI CENTER @ CENTRAL LIBRARY
Attention experimenters and those hungry for innovation, families, children and curious people from young to old: The ligeti zentrum - our new innovation center - will be open for 3 weeks in the Central Library at Hühnerposten and invites you to explore all kinds of things.
For the opening on February 9 and 10, there will be an exciting program with all kinds of hands-on opportunities:
The Moving Sound Pictures project, for example, allows you to go directly into famous paintings in virtual space with the help of VR glasses and make music interactively. There is a painting competition between children and robots, an audio walk to explore the library or a station for sound art and sampling and much more. Everything for people aged 3 to 99.
A GUEST AT THE C. BECHSTEIN CENTRUM HAMBURG
From February 15, we will be playing at a new venue. To be more precise, our piano students will have the wonderful opportunity to perform regularly at the C. Bechstein Centrum Hamburg.
The new series is called Young Artists in Concert. Two young pianists will perform on 6 evenings in 2024. To kick things off, Malte Henrik Gohr and Michelle Candotti (both in Prof. Hubert Rutkowski's class) will perform works by Fredric Chopin, Robert Schumann, Franz Liszt and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
We look forward to the new concert series in an inspiring atmosphere between loud grand pianos and upright pianos on two floors.
Young Artists in Concert on February 15
FOLGEN SIE UNS!
